LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



ONGRES 



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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 






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MARY BAKER G. EDDY. 



AUTHOR OF 

"SCIENCE AND HEALTH." 



FIFTH THOUSAND. 



BOSTON, MASS.: 
W. G. NIXON, Publisher, 

62 Boylston Street. 
1892. 



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41 



Copyright, 1891. 
BY MARY BAKER G. EDDY. 



All rights reserved. 

Copyright, 1892. 
BY MARY BAKER G. EDDY. 



All rights reserved. 



^ 



The Barta Press, Boston. 



CONTENTS. 



Voices Not Our Own 7 

Early Studies 10 

Girlhood's Composition 11 

Theological Keminiscence 12 

Poem : The Country Seat 18 

Marriage and Parentage 20 

Emergence into Light . 26 

The Great Discovery 28 

Foundation Work 36 

Medical Experiments 40 

First Publication 43 

The Precious Yolume 45 

Recuperative Incident 48 

A True Man 50 

College and Church 51 

Poem: Feed My Sheep 56 

College Closed 57 

General Associations and Our Magazine. . 63 

Faith Cure 65 

Foundation Stones 67 

The Great Revelation 71 

Sin, Sinner, and Ecclesiasticism 76 

The Human Concept 81 

Personality 89 

Plagiarism 91 

Admonition 94 

Exemplification. 107 

Way Marks 117 

5 



^trnptdimt mi ptmyutm, 



Voices J^ot Our Qwt)+ 

TJY childhood's home I remember as one with 
J the open hand. The needy were ever 

welcome, and to the clergy were accorded special 
household privileges. 

Many peculiar circumstances and events con- 
nected with my childhood throng the chambers 
of memory. 

For some twelve months, when I was about 
eight years old, I repeatedly heard a voice, calling 
me distinctly by name, three times, in an ascend- 
ing scale. I thought this was my mother's voice, 
and sometimes went to her, beseeching her to tell 
me what she wanted. Her answer was always : 
"Nothing, child! What do you mean?" 
Then I would say : " Mother, who did call me ? 
I heard somebody call Mary, three times ! " 
This continued until I grew discouraged, and 
my mother was perplexed and anxious. 



RETROSPECTION AND INTROSPECTION. 

One day, when my cousin, Mehitable Huntoon, 
was visiting us, and I sat in a little chair by 
her side, in the same room with grandmother, — 
the call again came, so loud that Mehitable 
heard it, though I had ceased to notice it. 
Greatly surprised, my cousin turned to me and 
said, "Your mother is calling you!" but I 
answered not, till again the same call was thrice 
repeated. Mehitable then said sharply, " Why 
don't you go ? your mother is calling you ! " 

1 then left the room, went to my mother, and 
once more asked her if she had summoned me ? 
She answered as always before. Then I 
earnestly declared my cousin had heard the 
voice, and said that mother wanted me. 
Accordingly she returned with me to grand- 
mother's room, and led my cousin into an 
adjoining apartment. The door was ajar, and 
I listened with bated breath. Mother told 
Mehitable all about this mysterious voice, and 
asked if she really did hear Mary's name pro- 
nounced in audible tones. My cousin answered 
quickly, and emphasized her affirmation. 



VOICES NOT OUR OWN. 9 

That night, before going to rest, my mother 
read to me the Scriptural narrative of little 
Samuel, and bade me, when the voice called 
again, to reply as he did, " Speak, Lord ; for 
thy servant heareth." The voice came ; but I 
was afraid, and did not answer. Afterward I 
wept, and prayed that God would forgive me, 
resolving to do, next time, as my mother had 
bidden me. When the call came again I did 
answer, in the words of Samuel, but never 
again to the material senses was that mysterious 
call repeated. 

Is it not much that I mav worship Him, 

With nought my spirit's breathings to control, 
And feel His presence in the vast and dim 

And whispering woods, where dying thunders roll 
From the far cataracts ? Shall I not rejoice 
That I have learned at last to know His voice 

From man's ? — I will rejoice ! My soaring soul 
Now hath redeemed her birthright of the day, 
And won, through clouds, to Him, her own unfettered 
way! 

— Mrs. Hemans. 



Garlg Studies* 

TTY father was taught to believe that my 
J brain was too large for my body and so 

kept me much out of school, but I gained book- 
knowledge with far less labor than is usually 
requisite. At ten years of age I was as familiar 
with Lindley Murray's Grammar as with the 
Westminster Catechism ; and the latter I had 
to repeat every Sunday. My favorite studies 
were Natural Philosophy, Logic, and Moral 
Science. From my brother Albert I received 
lessons in the ancient tongues, Hebrew, Greek, 
and Latin. My brother studied Hebrew during 
his college vacations. After my discovery of 
Christian Science, most of the knowledge I had 
gleaned from schoolbooks vanished like a dream. 
Learning was so illumined, that grammar 
was eclipsed. Etymology was divine history, 
voicing the idea of God in man's origin and 
signification. Syntax was spiritual order and 
unity. Prosody, the song of angels, and no 
earthly or inglorious theme. 



10 



Qirlfyood's Composition 

17TROM childhood I was a verse maker. Poetry 
suited my emotions better than prose. The 
following is one of my girlhood productions. 

Alphabet astd Bayonet. 

If fancy plumes aeriel flight, 

Go fix thy restless mind 
On Learning's lore and Wisdom's might, 

And live to bless mankind. 
The sword is sheathed, 'tis freedom's hour, 

No despot bears misrule, 
Where Knowledge plants the foot of power 

In our God-blessed Free School. 

Forth from this fount the streamlets flow, 

That widen in their course. 
Hero and sage arise to show 

Science the mighty source, 
And laud the land whose talents rock 

The cradle of her power, 
And wreathes are twined round Plymouth Rock, 

From erudition's bower. 

Further than feet of chamois fall, 

Free as the generous air, 
Strains nobler far than clarion call, 

Wake freedom's welcome where 
Minerva's silver sandals still 

Are loosed, and not effete, 
Where echoes still my day-dreams thrill, 

Woke by her fancied feet. 
11 



Theological T\crr)ir)isccr)ce+ 

TJT the age of twelve I was admitted to the 
/ Congregationalist (Trinitarian) Church, 
my parents having been members of that body 
for a half-century. In connection with this 
event, some circumstances are noteworthy. 
Before this step was taken, the doctrine of 
Unconditional Election, or Predestination, 
greatly troubled me ; for I was unwilling to 
be saved, if my brothers and sisters were to be 
numbered among those who were doomed to 
perpetual banishment from God. So perturbed 
was I by the thoughts aroused by this erroneous 
doctrine, that the family doctor was summoned, 
and pronounced me stricken with fever. 

My father's relentless theology emphasized 
belief in a final Judgment Day, in the danger 
of endless punishment, and in a Jehovah merci- 
less towards unbelievers ; and of these things 
he now spoke, hoping to win me from dreaded 
heresy. 

My mother, as she bathed my burning tem- 
12 



THEOLOGICAL REMINISCENCE. 



13 



pies, bade me lean on God's love, which would 
give me rest, if I went to Him in prayer, as I 
was wont to do, seeking His guidance. I 
prayed ; and a soft glow of ineffable joy came 
over me. The fever was gone, and I rose and 
dressed myself, in a normal condition of health. 
Mother saw this, and was glad. The physician 
marvelled; and the "horrible decree " of Pre- 
destination — as John Calvin rightly called his 
own tenet — forever lost its power over 
me. 

When the meeting was held for the exami- 
nation of candidates for membership, I was of 
course present. The pastor was an old-school 
expounder of the strictest Presbyterian doc- 
trines. He was apparently as eager to have un- 
believers in these dogmas lost, as he was to have 
elect believers converted, and rescued from per- 
dition ; for both salvation and condemnation 
depended, according to his views, upon the good 
pleasure of infinite Love. However, I was 
ready for his doleful questions, which I an- 
swered without a tremor, declaring that never 



14 RETROSPECTION AND INTROSPECTION. 

could I unite with the Church, if assent to this 
doctrine was essential thereto. 

Distinctly do I recall what followed. I stoutly 
maintained that I was willing to trust God, and 
take my chance of spiritual safety with my 
brothers and sisters, — not one of whom had 
then made any profession of religion, — even if 
my credal doubts left me outside the doors. 
The minister then wished me to tell him when 
I had experienced a change of heart ; but tear- 
fully I had to respond that I could not designate 
any precise time. Nevertheless, he persisted in 
the assertion that I had been truly regenerated, 
and asked me to say how I felt when the new 
light dawned within me. I replied that I could 
only answer him in the words of the Psalmist : 
" Search me, O God, and know my heart ; try 
me, and know my thoughts ; and see if there be 
any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way 
everlasting." 

This was so earnestly said, that even the 
oldest churehmembers wept. After the meet- 
ing was over they came and kissed me. To the 



THEOLOGICAL REMINISCENCE. 15 

astonishment of many, the good clergyman's 
heart also melted, and he received me into their 
communion, and my protest along with me. 
My connection with this religious body was 
retained till I founded a church of my own, 
built on the basis of Christian Science, " Jesus 
Christ himself being the chief cornerstone." 

In confidence of faith, I could say in David's 
words, " I will go in the strength of the Lord 
God : I will make mention of thy righteousness, 
even of thine only. O God, thou hast taught 
me from my youth: and hitherto have I de- 
clared thy wondrous works." — Psalms. 

In the year 1878 I was called to preach in 
Boston at the Baptist Tabernacle of Reverend 
Daniel C. Eddy, D. D., — by the pastor of this 
Church. I accepted the invitation and com- 
menced work. 

The congregation so increased in number the 
pews were not sufficient to seat the audience 
and benches were used in the aisles. At the 
close of my engagement we parted in Christian 
fellowship, if not in full unity of doctrine. 



16 RETROSPECTION AND INTROSPECTION. 

Our last vestry meeting was made memorable 
by eloquent addresses from persons who feel- 
ingly testified to having been healed through 
my preaching. Among other diseases cured 
they specified cancers. The cases described had 
been treated and given over by physicians of the 
popular schools of medicine, but I had not 
heard of these cases till the persons who divulged 
their secret joy, were healed. A prominent 
churchman agreeably informed the congregation, 
that many others present had been healed under 
my preaching, but were too timid to testify in 
public. 

One memorable Sunday afternoon, a soprano, 
— clear, strong, sympathetic, — floating up from 
the pews, caught my ear. When the meeting was 
over, two ladies pushing their way through the 
crowd reached the platform. With tears of joy 
flooding her eyes — for she was a mother — one 
of them said : " Did you hear my daughter sing ? 
Why, she has not sung before since she left the 
choir and was in consumption ! When she 
entered this church one hour ago she could not 



THEOLOGICAL REMINISCENCE. 1< 

speak a loud word, and now, oh, thank God, she 
is healed." 

It was not an uncommon occurrence in my 
own Church for the sick to be healed by 
my sermon. Many pale cripples went into the 
Church leaning on crutches who went out car- 
rying them on their shoulders. "And these 
signs shall follow them that believe." Jesus. 



PQCtt). 

Written in youth while visiting a family friend in the beautiful 
suburbs of Boston. 

The Country Seat. 
T9TILD spirit of song, — midst the zephyrs at 

In bowers of beauty, — I bend to thy lay, 
And woo, while I worship in deep sylvan spot, 
The muses' soft echoes to kindle the grot, — 
Wake chords of my lyre, with musical kiss, 
To vibrate and tremble with accents of bliss. 

Here Morning peers out, from her crimson repose, 
On proud Prairie Queen and the modest Moss Rose ; 
And Vesper reclines — when the dewdrop is shed 
On the heart of the pink — in its odorous bed ; 
But Flora has stolen the rainbow and sky, 
To sprinkle the flowers with exquisite dye. 

Here fame-honored Hickory rears his bold form, 
And bears a brave breast to the lightning and storm, 
While Palm, Bay, and Laurel, in classical glee, 
Chase Tulip, Magnolia, and fragrant Fringe-tree ; 
And sturdy Horse Chestnut for centuries hath given 
Its feathery blossom and branches to Heaven. 

Here is life ! Here is youth ! Here the poet's 

world-wish, — 
Cool waters at play with the gold gleaming fish ; 

18 



POEM. 



19 



While Cactus a mellower glory receives 

From light, colored softly by blossom and leaves ; 

And nestling Alder is whispering low, 

In lap of the Pear-tree, with musical flow.* 

Dark sentinel Hedgerow is guarding repose, 
Midst grotto and songlet and streamlet that flows 
Where beauty and perfume from buds burst away, 
And ope their closed cells to the bright, laughing 

day; 
Yet dwellers in Eden, Earth yields you her tear, — 
Oft plucked for the banquet, but laid on the bier. 

Earth's beauty and glory delude as the shrine, 
Or fount of real joy and of visions divine ; 
But hope, as the eaglet that spurn eth the sod, 
May soar above matter, to fasten on God, 
And freely adore all His spirit hath made, 
Where rapture and radiance and glory ne'er fade. 

Oh ! give me the spot, where Affection may dwell 
In sacred communion with Home's magic spell, 
Where flowers of feeling are fragrant and fair, 
And those we most love find a happiness rare ; 
But clouds are a presage, — they darken my lay : 
This life is a shadow, and hastens away. 

*An Alder growing from the bent branch of a pear-tree. 



JWarriage at?d Parentage. 

TN 1843 I was united to my first husband, 
Colonel George Washington Glover, of 
Charleston, South Carolina, the ceremony taking 
place under the paternal roof, in Tilton. 

After parting with the dear home circle I 
went with him to the South ; but he was spared 
to me for only one brief year. He was in Wil- 
mington, North Carolina on business, when the 
yellow-fever raged in that city, and was sud- 
denly attacked by this insidious disease, which 
in his case proved fatal. 

My husband was a Free Mason, being a mem- 
ber in Saint Andrew's Lodge, Number 10, and 
of Union Chapter, Number 3, of Royal Arch 
Masons. He was highly esteemed and sincerely 
lamented by a large circle of friends and ac- 
quaintances, whose kindness and sympathy 
helped to support me in this terrible bereave- 
ment. A month later I returned to New Hamp- 
shire, where, at the end of four months my babe 
was born. 



MARRIAGE AND PARENTAGE. 21 

Colonel Glover's tender devotion to his young 
bride, was remarked by all observers. With his 
parting breath he gave pathetic directions to his 
brother Masons about accompanying her on her 
sad journey to the North. Here it is but justice 
to record, they performed their obligations most 
faithfully. 

After returning to the paternal roof I lost all 
my husband's property, except what money I 
had brought with me ; and remained with my 
parents until after my mother's decease. 

A few months before my father's second mar- 
riage to Mrs. Elizabeth Patterson Duncan, sister 
of Lieutenant-Governor George W. Patterson, 
of New York — my little son, about four years 
of age, was sent away from me, and put under 
the care of our family nurse, who had married, 
and resided in the northern part of New Hamp- 
shire. I had no training for self-support, and 
my home I regarded as very precious. The 
night before my child was taken from me, 
I knelt by his side throughout the dark 
hours, hoping for a vision of relief from this 



22 RETROSPECTION AND INTROSPECTION. 

trial. The following lines are taken from my 
poem, "Mother's Darling," written after this 
separation : 

Thy smile through tears, as sunshine o'er the sea, 

Awoke new beauty in the surge's roll ! 
Oh, life is dead, bereft of all, with thee, — 

Star of my earthly hope, babe of my soul. 

My second marriage was very unfortunate, 
and from it I was compelled to ask for a bill of 
divorce, which was granted me in the city of 
Salem, Massachusetts. 

My dominant thought in marrying again was 
to get back my child, but after our marriage his 
stepfather was not willing he should have a 
home with me. A plot was consummated for 
keeping us apart. The family to whose care he 
was committed very soon removed to what was 
then regarded as the Far West. 

After his removal a letter was read to my 
little son informing him that his mother was 
dead and buried. Without my knowledge he 
was appointed a guardian, and I was then 



, 



MARRIAGE AND PARENTAGE. 23 

informed that my son was lost. Every means 
within my power was employed to find him, but 
without success. We never met again until he 
had reached the age of thirty-four, had a wife 
and two children, and by a strange providence 
had learned that his mother still lived, and 
came to see me in Massachusetts. 

Meanwhile he had served as a volunteer 
throughout the war for the Union, and at its 
expiration was appointed United States Marshal 
of the Territory of Dakota. 

It is well to know, dear reader, that our 
material, mortal history is but the record of 
dreams, not of man's real existence, and the 
dream has no place in the science of being. It 
is as "a tale that is told," and as "the shadow 
when it declineth." The heavenly intent of 
earth's shadows is to chasten the affections, to 
rebuke human consciousness and turn it gladly 
from a material, false sense of life and happi- 
ness, to spiritual joy and true estimate of Being. 

The awakening from a false sense of life, 
substance, and mind in matter, is as yet imper- 



24 RETROSPECTION AND INTROSPECTION. 

feet ; but for those lucid and enduring lessons 
of Love, which tend to this result, I bless God. 

Mere historic incidents and personal events 
are frivolous and of no moment, unless they 
illustrate the ethics of Truth. To this end, 
but only to this end, such narrations may be 
admissible and advisable ; but if spiritual con- 
clusions are separated from their premises, the 
nexus is lost, and the argument, with its right- 
ful conclusions, becomes correspondingly ob- 
scure. The human history needs to be revised, 
and the material record expunged. 

The Gospel narratives bear brief testimony 
even to the life of our great Master. His spir- 
itual noumenon and phenomenon, silenced por- 
traiture. Writers, less wise than the Apostles, 
essayed in the Apocryphal New Testament, a 
legendary and traditional history of the early 
life of Jesus. But Saint Paul summarized the 
character of Jesus as the model of Christianity, 
in these words : " Consider him who endured 
such contradictions of sinners against himself.*' 
" Who for the joy that was set before him, en- 



MARRIAGE AND PARENTAGE. 25 

dured the cross, despising the shame, and is set 
down at the right hand of the throne of God." 

It may be that the mortal life-battle still 
wages, and must continue till its involved errors 
are vanquished by victory-bringing Science ; but 
this triumph will come ! God is over all. He 
alone is our origin, aim, and Being. The real 
man is not of the dust, nor is he ever created 
through the flesh; for his father and mother 
are the one Spirit, and his brethren are all the 
children of one parent, the eternal Good. 



TITHE trend of human life was too eventful 
to leave me undisturbed in the illusion that 
this so-called life could be a real and abiding 
rest. All things earthly must ultimately yield 
to the irony of Fate, or else be merged into the 
one infinite Love. 

As these pungent lessons became clearer, 
they grew sterner. Previously the cloud of 
mortal mind seemed to have a silver lining ; 
but now it was not even fringed with light. 
Matter was no longer spanned with its rainbow 
of promise. The world was dark. The on- 
coming hours were indicated by no floral dial. 
The senses could not prophecy sunrise or star- 
light. 

Thus it was when the moment arrived of the 
heart's bridal to more spiritual existence. When 
the door opened, I was waiting and watching ; 
and lo ! the bridegroom came ! The character of 
the Christ was illumined by the midnight torches 
of Spirit. My heart knew its Redeemer. He 



EMERGENCE INTO LIGHT. 27 

whom my affections had diligently sought was 
as " the One altogether lovely," as " the chief- 
est," the only, "among ten thousand." Soul- 
less famine had fled. Agnosticism, Pantheism, 
and Theosophy were void. Being was beautiful, 
its substance, Cause and currents were God and 
His idea. I had touched the hem of Christian 
Science. 



Tfye Qreat Discovery* 

TT was in Massachusetts, in the year 1866, 
that I discovered the Science of Divine Met- 
aphysical Healing, which I afterwards named 
Christian Science. The discovery came to pass 
in this way. During twenty years prior to my 
discovery I had been trying to trace all physi- 
cal effects to a mental cause ; and in the latter 
part of 1866 I gained the Scientific certainty 
that all causation was Mind, and every effect a 
mental phenomenon. 

My immediate recovery from the effects of an 
injury caused by an accident, an injury that 
neither medicine nor surgery could reach, was 
the falling apple that led me to the discovery 
how to be well myself, and how to make others so. 

Even to the physician who attended me, and 
rejoiced in my recovery, I could not then 
explain the modus of my relief. I could only 
assure him that the divine Spirit had wrought 
the miracle — a miracle which later I found 
to be in perfect Scientific accord with divine law. 

28 



THE GREAT DISCOVERY. 29 

I then withdrew from society about three 
years, — to ponder my mission, to search the 
Scriptures, to find the Science of Mind, that 
should take the things of God and show them 
to the creature, and reveal the great curative 
Principle, — Deity. 

The Bible was my text-book. It answered 
my questions as to how I was healed ; but the 
Scriptures had to me a new meaning, a new 
tongue. Their spiritual signification appeared ; 
and I apprehended for the first time, in their 
spiritual meaning. Jesus' teaching and demon- 
stration, and the Principle and rule of spiritual 
Science and Metaphysical Healing, — in a word, 
Christian Science. 

I named it Christian, because it is compas- 
sionate, helpful, and spiritual. God I called 
Immortal Mind. That which sins, suffers, and 
dies I named mortal mind. The physical senses, 
or sensuous nature, I called error and shadow. 
Soul I denominated Substance, because Soul 
alone is truly substantial. God I characterized 
as individual entity, but His corporeality I 



30 RETROSPECTION AND INTROSPECTION. 

denied. The Real I claimed as eternal; and 
its antipodes, or the temporal, I described as 
unreal. Spirit I called the reality ; and matter, 
the unreality. 

I knew the human conception of God to be 
that He was a physically personal Being, like 
unto man ; and that the five physical senses are 
so many witnesses to the physical personality of 
mind, and the real existence of matter; but I 
learned that these material senses testify falsely, 
that matter neither sees, hears, nor feels Spirit, 
and is therefore inadequate to form any proper 
conception of the infinite Mind. "If I bear 
witness of myself my witness is not true." 
(John v. 31.) 

I beheld with ineffable awe our great Master's 
purpose in not questioning those He healed as to 
their disease, or its symptoms, and his marvelous 
skill in demanding neither obedience to hygienic 
laws, nor prescribing drugs to support the Divine 
power which heals. Adoringly I discerned the 
Principle of his holy heroism and Christian 
example on the cross, when he refused to 



THE GREAT DISCOVERY. 31 

drink the "vinegar and gall," a preparation 
of poppy, or aconite, to allay the tortures of 
crucifixion. 

Our great Way-shower, steadfast to the end 
in his obedience to God's laws, demonstrated for 
all time and peoples the supremacy of Good 
over evil, and the superiority of Spirit over 
matter. 

The miracles recorded in the Bible, which had 
before seemed to me supernatural, grew divinely 
natural and apprehensible; though uninspired 
interpreters ignorantly pronounce Christ's heal- 
ing miraculous, instead of seeing therein the 
operation of the divine law. 

Jesus of Nazareth was a natural and divine 
Scientist. He was so before the material world 
saw him. He who antedated Abraham, and gave 
the world a new date in the Christian era, was 
a Christian Scientist, who needed no discovery 
of the Science of Being, in order to rebuke the 
evidence. To one "born of the flesh," however, 
Divine Science must be a discovery. Woman 
must give it birth. It must be begotten of 



32 RETROSPECTION AND INTROSPECTION. 

spirituality, since none but the pure in heart can 
see God, — the Principle of all things pure ; and 
none but the " poor in spirit " could first state 
this Principle, could know yet more of the 
nothingness of matter, and the allness of Spirit, 
could utilize Truth, and absolutely reduce the 
demonstration of Being, in Science, to the 
apprehension of the age. 

I wrote also, at this period, comments on the 
Scriptures, setting forth their spiritual inter- 
pretation, the Science of the Bible, and so laid 
the foundation of my work called Science 
and Health, published in 1875. 

If these notes and comments, which have 
never been read by any one but myself, were pub- 
lished, it would show that after my discovery 
of the absolute Science of Mind-healing, like all 
great truths, this spiritual Science developed itself 
to me until Science and Health was written. 
These early comments are valuable to me as 
waymarks of progress, which I would not have 
effaced. 

Up to that time I had not fully voiced my 



THE GREAT DISCOVERY. 33 

discovery. Naturally, my first jotting were but 
efforts to express in feeble diction Truth's ulti- 
mate. In Longfellow's Ian gauge : 

But the feeble hands and helpless, 
Groping blindly in the darkness, 
Touch God's right hand in that darkness, 
And are lifted up and strengthened. 

As sweet music ripples in one's first thoughts 
of it like the brooklet in its meandering midst 
pebbles and rocks, before the mind can duly 
express it to the ear, — so the harmony of 
Divine Science, first broke upon my sense, be- 
fore gathering experience and confidence to 
articulate it. Its natural manifestation is 
beautiful, and euphonious, but its written 
expression increases in power, and perfection, 
under the guidance of the great Master. 

The divine hand led me into a new world of 
light and Life, a fresh universe — old to God, 
but new to His " little one." It became evident 
that the divine Mind alone must answer, and 
be found as the Life, or Principle, of all Being ; 
and that one must acquaint himself with God, 



34 RETROSPECTION AND INTROSPECTION. 

if he would be at peace. He must be ours 
practically, guiding our every thought and 
action ; else we cannot understand the omni- 
presence of Good sufficiently to demonstrate, 
even in part, the Science of the perfect Mind 
and divine healing. 

I had learned that thought must be spiritual- 
ized, in order to apprehend Spirit. It must 
become honest, unselfish, and pure, in order to 
have the least understanding of God in Divine 
Science. The first must become last. Our 
reliance upon material things must be trans- 
ferred to a perception of and dependence on 
spiritual things. For Spirit to be supreme in 
demonstration, it must be supreme in our 
affections, and we must be clad with divine 
power. Purity, self-renunciation, faith, and 
understanding must reduce all things real to their 
own mental denomination, Mind, which divides, 
subdivides, increases, diminishes, constitutes, and 
sustains, according to the law of God. 

I had learned that Mind reconstructed the 
body, and that nothing else could. How it was 



THE GREAT DISCOVERY. 35 

done, the spiritual Science of Mind must reveal. 
It was a mystery to me then, but I have since 
understood it. All Science is a revelation. 
Its Principle is divine, not human, reaching 
higher than the stars of heaven. 

Am I a believer in Spiritualism ? I believe 
in no 'ism. This is my endeavor, to be a Chris- 
tian, to assimilate the character and practice of 
the Anointed; and no motive can cause a 
surrender of this effort. As I understand it, 
Spiritualism is the antipode of Christian Science. 
I esteem all honest people, and love them, and 
hold to loving our enemies, and doing good to 
them that " despitefully use you and persecute 

you." 



Foutjdatio*? Work. 

TTS the pioneer of Christian Science I stood 
/ alone in this conflict, endeavoring to 
smite error with the falchion of Truth. The 
rare bequests of Christian Science are costly, 
and they have won fields of battle, from which 
the dainty borrower would have fled. Cease- 
less toil, self-renunciation, and love, have 
cleared its pathway. 

The motive of my earliest labors has never 
changed. It was to relieve the sufferings of 
humanity, by a sanitary system that should 
include all moral and religious reform. 

It is often asked why Christian Science was 
revealed to me as one Intelligence analyzing, 
uncovering, and annihilating the false testi- 
mony of the physical senses. Why was this 
conviction necessary to the right apprehension 
of the invincible and infinite energies of 
Truth and Love, as contrasted with the foibles 
and fables of finite mind and material ex- 
istence. 



FOUNDATION WORK. 6t 

The answer is plain. Saint Paul declared 
that the Law was the schoolmaster, to bring 
him to Christ. Even so was I led into the 
mazes of divine metaphysics through the gospel 
of suffering, the providence of God, and the 
cross of Christ. No one else can drain the cup 
which I have drunk to the dregs, as the dis- 
coverer and teacher of Christian Science ; 
neither can its inspiration be gained without 
tasting this cup. 

The loss of material objects of affection sun- 
ders the dominant ties of earth, and points to 
Heaven. Nothing can compete with Christian 
Science, and its demonstration, in showing this 
solemn certainty, in growing freedom and vindi- 
cating "the ways of God" to man. The abso- 
lute proof and self-evident propositions of 
Truth are immeasurably paramount to rubric and 
dogma in proving the Christ. 

From my very childhood I was impelled, by 
a hunger and thirst after divine things, — a 
desire for something higher and better than 
matter, and apart from it, — to seek diligently 



38 » RETROSPECTION AND INTROSPECTION. 

for the knowledge of God, as the one great and 
ever-present relief from human woe. The first 
spontaneous motion of Truth and Love, acting 
through Christian Science on my roused con- 
sciousness, banished at once and forever the 
fundamental error of faith in things material; 
for this trust is the unseen sin, the unknown 
foe, — the heart's untamed desire, which 
breaketh the divine commandments. As says 
Saint James : " Whosoever shall keep the whole 
law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty 
of all." 

Into mortal mind's material obliquity I 
gazed, and stood abashed. Blanched was the 
cheek of pride. My heart bent low before the 
omnipotence of Spirit, and a tint of humility, 
soft as the heart of a moonbeam, mantled the 
earth. Bethlehem and Bethany, Gethsemane 
and Calvary, spoke to my chastened sense as 
by the tearful lips of a babe. Frozen foun- 
tains were unsealed. Erudite systems of philos- 
ophy and religion melted, for Love unveiled 
the healing promise and potency of a present 



FOUNDATION WORK. 39 

spiritual afflatus. It was the gospel of healing, 
on its divinely appointed human mission, bear- 
ing on its white wings, to my apprehension 
" the beauty of holiness," — even the possibili- 
ties of spiritual insight, knowledge, and being. 

Early had I learned, that whatever is loved 
materially, as mere corporeal personality, is 
eventually lost. u For whosoever shall save 
his life shall lose it," saith the Master. Ex- 
ultant hope, if tinged with earthliness, is 
crushed as the moth. 

What is termed mortal and material exist- 
ence, is graphically denned by Caldron, the 
famous Spanish poet, who wrote : — 

What is life ? 'Tis but a madness. 
What is life ? A mere illusion, 
Fleeting pleasure, fond delusion, 

Short-lived joy, that ends in sadness, 
Whose most constant substance seems 
But the dream of other dreams. 



JVJedical Experiments* 

TITHE physical side of this research was aided 
by hints from Homoeopathy, sustaining 
my final conclusion that mortal belief, instead 
of the drug, governed the action of material 
medicine. 

I wandered through the dim mazes of Materia 
Medica, till I was weary of "scientific guess- 
ing," as it has been well called. I sought 
knowledge from the different schools, — Allop- 
athy, Homoeopathy, Hydropathy, Electricity, 
and from various humbugs, — but without re- 
ceiving satisfaction. 

I found, in the two hundred and sixty-two 
remedies enumerated by Jahr, one pervading 
secret, — namely, that the less material medi- 
cine we have, and the more Mind, the better the 
work is done ; a fact which seems to prove the 
principle of Mind-healing. One drop of the 
thirtieth attenuation of Natrum Muriaticum, in 
a tumbler-full of water, and one teaspoonful of 
the water mixed with the faith of ages, would 



MEDICAL EXPERIMENTS. 41 

cure patients not affected by a larger dose. 
The drug disappears in the higher attenuations 
of Homoeopathy, and matter is thereby rarefied to 
its fatal essence, mortal mind; but immortal 
Mind the curative Principle remains, and is 
found to be even more active. 

The mental virtues of the material methods 
of medicine, when understood, were insufficient 
to satisfy my doubts as to the honesty or 
utility of using a material curative. I must 
know more of the unmixed, unerring Source, 
in order to gain the Science of Mind, the All- 
in-all of Spirit, in which matter is obsolete. 
Nothing less could solve the mental problem. 
If I sought an answer from the medical schools, 
the reply was dark and contradictory. Neither 
ancient nor modern philosophy could clear the 
clouds, or give me one distinct statement of 
the spiritual Science of Mind-healing. Human 
reason was not equal to it. 

I claim for healing scientifically the follow- 
ing advantages. (1) It does away with all ma- 
terial medicines, and recognizes the antidote 



42 RETROSPECTION AND INTROSPECTION. 

for all sickness, as well as sin, in the immortal 
Mind ; and mortal mind as the source of all 
the ills which befall mortals. (2) It is more 
effectual than drugs, and cures when they fail, 
or only relieve, thus proving the superiority 
of metaphysics over physics. (3) A person 
healed by Christian Science is not only healed 
of his disease, but he is advanced morally and 
spiritually. The mortal body being but the 
objective state of the mortal mind, this mind 
must be renovated to improve the body. 



fir$t Publication 

TN 1870 I copyrighted the first publication on 
spiritual, scientific Mind -healing, entitled 
The Science of Man. This little book is 
converted into the chapter Recapitulation in 
Science and Health. It was so new, — the 
basis it laid down for physical and moral health 
was so hopelessly original and men were so 
unfamiliar with the subject, — that I did not 
venture upon its publication until later, having 
learned that the merits of Christian Science 
must be proven, before a work on this subject 
could be profitably published. 

The truths of Christian Science are not 
interpolations of the Scriptures, but the spirit- 
ual interpretations thereof. Science is the 
prism of Truth, which divides its rays, and 
brings out the hues of Deity. Human hypoth- 
eses have darkened the glow and grandeur 
of Evangelical religion. When speaking of 
his true followers in every period, Jesus said, 
" They shall lay hands on the sick and they 
shall recover." There is no authority for 

43 



44 RETROSPECTION AND INTROSPECTION. 

querying the authenticity of this declaration, 
for it already was, and is demonstrated as 
practical, and its claim is substantiated, — a 
claim too immanent to fall to the ground 
beneath the stroke of artless workmen. 

Though a man were girt with the Urim and 
Thummim of priestly office, and denied the 
perpetuity of Jesus' command — " heal the 
sick " — or its application in all time to those 
who understand Christ as the Truth, and the 
Life, — that man would not expound the Gos- 
pel according to Jesus. 

Five years after taking out my first copyright 
I taught the Science of Mind-healing, alias 
Christian Science, by writing out my manu- 
scripts for students, and distributing them 
unsparingly. This will account for certain 
unpublished manuscripts extant, which the 
evil-minded would insinuate did not originate 
with me. 



T\)£ Precious Yolunje* 

TITHE first edition of my most important work, 
Science and Health, containing the 
complete statement of Christian Science, — 
the term employed by me to express the Divine, 
or spiritual Science of Mind-healing, was pub- 
lished in 1875. 

When it was first printed, the critics took 
pleasure in saying: "This book is indeed 
wholly original, but it will never be read." 

The first edition numbered one thousand 
copies. In September, 1891, it had reached 
sixty- two editions. 

Those who formerly sneered at it, as foolish 
and eccentric, now declare Bishop Berkeley, 
David Hume, Ralph Waldo Emerson, or certain 
German philosophers, to have been the origi- 
nators of the Science of Mind-healing, as 
therein stated. 

Even the Scripture gave no direct interpreta- 
tion of the Scientific basis for demonstrating 
the spiritual Principle of healing, until our 

45 



46 RETROSPECTION AND INTROSPECTION. 

Heavenly Father saw fit, through the Key to 
the Scriptures, in Science and Health, to 
unlock this "mystery of godliness." 

My reluctance to give the public, in my first 
edition of Science and Health, the chapter 
on Animal Magnetism, and the divine purpose 
that this should be done, may have an interest 
for the reader, and will be seen in the following 
circumstances. I had finished that edition as 
far as that chapter, when the printer informed 
me that he could not go on with my work. I 
had already paid him seven hundred dollars, 
and yet he stopped my work. All efforts to 
persuade him to finish my book were in vain. 

After months had passed, I yielded to a con- 
stant conviction that I must insert in my last 
chapter a partial history of what I had already 
observed of mental malpractice. Accordingly, 
I set to work, contrary to my inclination, to 
fulfil this painful task, and finished my copy 
for the book. As it afterwards appeared, 
although I had not thought of such a result, 
my printer resumed his work at the same time, 



THE PRECIOUS VOLUME. 47 

finished printing the copy he had on hand, and 
then started for Lynn to see me. The after- 
noon that he left Boston for Lynn, I started for 
Boston with my finished copy. We met at the 
Eastern depot in Lynn, and were both sur- 
prised, — I to learn that he had printed all the 
copy on hand, and had come to tell me he 
wanted more, — he to find me en route for Bos- 
ton, to give him the closing chapter of my first 
edition of Science and Health. Not a word 
had passed between us audibly nor mentally, 
while this went on. I had grown disgusted with 
my printer, and become silent. He had come 
to a standstill through motives and circumstances 
unknown to me. 

Science and Health is the textbook of 
Christian Science. Whosoever learns the letter 
of this Book must also gain its spiritual signifi- 
cance in order to demonstrate Christian Science. 

When the demand for this book increased, 
and people were healed by simply reading it, the 
copyright was infringed. I entered a suit at 
Law, and my copyright was protected. 



Recuperative lt)cidet)L 

T17HR0UGH four successive years I healed, 
preached, and taught in a general way, 
refusing to take any pay for my services, and 
living on a small annuity. 

At one time I was called to speak before the 
Lyceum Club, at Westerly, Rhode Island. On 
my arrival my hostess told me that her next 
door neighbor was dying. I asked permission 
to see her. It was granted, and with my 
hostess I went to the invalid's house. 

The physicians had given up the case, and 
retired. I had stood by her side about fifteen 
minutes when the sick woman rose from her bed, 
dressed herself, and was well. Afterwards 
they showed me the clothes already prepared 
for her burial ; and told me that her physicians 
had said the diseased condition was caused by 
an injury received from a surgical operation at 
the birth of her last babe, and that it was im- 
possible for her to be delivered of another child. 
It is sufficient to add her babe was safely born, 

48 



RECUPERATIVE INCIDENT. 



49 



and weighed twelve pounds. The mother 
afterwards wrote to me, " I never before suffered 
so little in childbirth." 

This Scientific demonstration so stirred the 
doctors and clergy that they had my notices for 
a second lecture pulled down, and refused me a 
hearing in their halls and churches. This cir- 
cumstance is cited simply to show the opposi- 
tion which Christian Science encountered a 
quarter-century ago, as contrasted with its 
present welcome into the sick room. 

Many were the desperate cases I instantly 
healed, "without money and without price," 
and in most instances without even an acknowl- 
edgment of the benefit. 



/V True JVtar;. 

TTY last marriage was with Asa Gilbert 
J Eddy, and was a blessed and spiritual 

union, solemnized at Lynn, Massachusetts, by 
the Rev. Samuel Barrett Stewart, in the year 
1877. Dr. Eddy was the first student to pub- 
licly announce himself a Christian Scientist, 
and place these symbolic words on his office 
sign. He forsook all to follow in this line of 
light. He was the first organizer of a Chris- 
tian Science Sunday-school, which he superin- 
tended. He also taught a special Bible-class ; 
and he lectured so ably on Scriptural topics, 
that people of other denominations listened to 
him with deep interest. He was remarkably 
successful in Mind-healing, and untiring in 
his chosen work. In 1882 he passed away, 
with a smile of peace and love resting on his 
serene countenance. " Mark the perfect man, 
and behold the upright : for the end of that 
man is peace." Psalms. 

50 



College at)d Cfyurcl?. 

TN 1867 I introduced the first purely metaphys- 
ical system of healing since the apostolic 
days. I begun by teaching one student Chris- 
tian Science Mind-healing. From this seed 
grew the Massachusetts Metaphysical College 
in Boston, chartered in 1881. No charter was 
granted for similar purposes after 1883. It is 
the only College hitherto, for teaching the pa- 
thology of spiritual power, alias the Science of 
Mind-healing. 

My husband, Asa G. Eddy, taught two 
terms in my College. After I gave up teach- 
ing, my adopted son, Ebenezer J. Foster-Eddy, 
a graduate of the Hahneman Medical College 
of Philadelphia, and who also received a cer- 
tificate from Dr. W. W. Keen's (Allopathic) 
Philadelphia School of Anatomy and Surgery, — 
having renounced his material method of practice 
and embraced the teachings of Christian Science, 
taught the Primary, Normal, and Obstetric 
Class one term. General Erastus N. Bates, 

51 



52 RETROSPECTION AND INTROSPECTION. 

taught one Primary Class, in 1889, after which 
I judged it best to close the institution. These 
students of mine were the only assistant 
teachers in the college. 

The first Christian Scientist Association was 
organized by myself and six of my students in 
1876, on the Centennial Day of our nation's 
freedom. At a meeting of the Christian Scien- 
tist Association, on April 19, 1879, it was voted 
to organize a church to commemorate the words 
and works of our Master, a Mind-healing church, 
without a creed, to be called the Church of Christ, 
Scientist, the first such church ever organized. 
The charter for this church was obtained in 
June, 1879, and during the same month the 
members, twenty-six in number, extended a call 
to me to become their pastor. I accepted the 
call, and was ordained in 1881, though I had 
preached five years before being ordained. 

When I was its pastor, and in the pulpit 
every Sunday, my church increased in members, 
and its spiritual growth kept pace with its 
increasing popularity; but when obliged, be- 



COLLEGE AND CHURCH. 53 

cause of accumulating work in the college, to 
preach only occasionally, no student, at that 
time, was found able to maintain the Church in 
its previous harmony and prosperity. 

Examining the situation prayerfully and care- 
fully, noting the church's need, and the predis- 
posing and exciting cause of its condition, I saw 
that the crisis had come when much time and 
attention must be given to defend this church 
from the envy and molestation of other churches, 
and from the danger to its members which 
must always lie in Christian warfare. At this 
juncture I recommended that the church be 
dissolved. No sooner were my views made 
known, than the proper measures were adopted 
to carry them out, the votes passing without a 
dissenting voice. 

This measure was immediately followed by 
a great revival of mutual love, prosperity, and 
spiritual power. 

The history of that hour holds this true record. 
Adding to its ranks and influence, this spiritually 
organized Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston 



54 RETROSPECTION AND INTROSPECTION. 

still goes on. A new light broke in upon it, 
and more beautiful became the garments of her 
who " bringeth glad tidings and publisheth 
peace." 

Despite the prosperity of my Church, it was 
learned that material organization has its value 
and peril, and that organization is requisite 
only in the earliest periods in Christian his- 
tory. After this material form of cohesion 
and fellowship has accomplished its end, con- 
tinued organization retards spiritual growth, 
and should be laid off, — even as the corporeal 
organization deemed requisite in the first stages 
of mortal existence is finally laid off, in order 
to gain spiritual freedom and supremacy. 

From careful observation and experience 
came my clue to the uses and abuses of organi- 
zation. Therefore in accord with my special 
request followed that noble unprecedented 
action of the Christian Scientist Association 
connected with my College when dissolving 
that organization, — in forgiving enemies, re- 
turning good for evil, in following Jesus' com- 



COLLEGE AND CHURCH. 55 

mand. "Whosoever shall smite thee on thy 
right cheek, turn to him the other also." I saw 
these fruits of Spirit, long-suffering, and tem- 
perance fulfill the law of Christ in righteousness. 
I also saw that Christianity has withstood less 
the temptation of popularity than of perse- 
cution. 



Lines penned when I was pastor of the Church of Christ, Scien- 
tist, in Boston. 

• " Feed my Sheep." 

O^HEPHERD, show me how to go 
|s3 O'er the hillside steep, 
How to gather, how to sow, 
How to feed Thy sheep : 
I will listen for Thy voice, 
Lest my footsteps stray, 
I will follow and rejoice 
All the rugged way. 

Thou wilt bind the stubborn will, 

Wound the callous breast, 
Make self righteousness be still, 

Break earth's stupid rest; 
Strangers on a barren shore 

Lab'ring long and lone, 
We would enter by the door, 

And Thou know'st Thine own. 

So when day grows dark and cold, 

Tear or triumph harms, 
Lead Thy lambkins to the fold, 

Take them in Thine arms ; 
Feed the hungry, heal the heart, 

Till the morning's beam ; 
White as wool, ere they depart, 

Shepherd, wash them clean. 



College Closed* 

TTFHE apprehension of what has been, and 
must be, the final outcome of material 
organization, which wars with Love's spiritual 
compact, caused me to dread the unprecedented 
popularity of my College. Students from all 
over our continent and from Europe, were 
flooding the school. At this time there were 
over three hundred applications from persons 
desiring to enter the college, and applicants 
were rapidly increasing. Example had shown 
the dangers arising from being placed on earthly 
pinnacles, and Christian Science shuns what- 
ever involves material means for the promotion 
of spiritual ends. 

In view of all this, a meeting was called of 
the Board of Directors of my college who being 
informed of my intentions unanimously voted 
that the school be discontinued. 

A Primary class student, richly imbued with 
the spirit of Christ, is a better healer and teacher 
than a Normal class student who partakes less 

57 



58 RETROSPECTION AND INTROSPECTION. 

of His love. Having received my instructions 
in the Primary class and afterwards studied 
thoroughly Science and Health, the student 
should not hesitate to enter upon this privileged 
Gospel work, and so fulfill the command of 
Christ. Yea, an apt Bible scholar and a conse- 
crated Christian, by deeply dipping into my last 
revised Science and Health, may even enter 
this field of labors without any personal in- 
struction, — beneficially to himself and the race. 
The Massachusetts Metaphysical College 
drew its breath from me, but I was yearning 
for retirement. The question was who else 
could sustain this institute, under all that was 
aimed at its vital purpose, the establishment of 
genuine Christian Science healing. My consci- 
entious scruples about diplomas, the recent expe- 
rience of the church fresh in my thoughts, and 
the growing conviction that everyone should 
build on his own foundation, subject to the one 
builder and maker, God, — all these considera- 
tions moved me to close my flourishing school, 
and the following resolutions were passed: 



COLLEGE CLOSED. 59 

At a special meeting of the Board of the Meta- 
physical College Corporation, Oct. 29, 1889, the 
following are some of the resolutions which were 
presented and passed unanimously : 

Whereas, The Massachusetts Metaphysical 
College, chartered in January 1881 for medical 
purposes, to give instruction in scientific methods 
of Mental Healing on a purely practical basis, to 
impart a thorough understanding of Metaphysics, 
to restore health, hope, and harmony to man, — 
has fulfilled its high and noble destiny, and sent 
to all parts of our country and into foreign lands, 
students instructed in Christian Science Mind 
Healing to meet the demand of the age for some- 
thing higher than physic or drugging ; and 

Whereas, The material organization was, in the 
beginning in this Institution, like the baptism of 
Jesus, of which he said, " Suffer it to be so now," 
though the teaching was a purely spiritual and 
scientific impartation of Truth, whose Christly 
Spirit has led to higher ways, means, and under- 
standing, — the President, Rev. Mary B. G. Eddy, 
at the height of prosperity in the institution which 
yields a large income, is willing to sacrifice all for 
the advancement of the world in Truth and Love ; 
and 

Whereas, Other institutions for instruction in 
Christian Science, which are working out their 



60 RETROSPECTION AND INTROSPECTION. 

periods of organization, will doubtless follow the 
example of the Alma Mater after having accom- 
plished the worthy purpose for which they were 
organized, and the hour has come wherein the 
great need is for more of the Spirit instead of the 
letter, and Science and Health is adapted to 
work this result ; and 

Whereas, The fundamental principle for growth 
in Christian Science is spiritual formation first, last, 
and always, while in human growth material organ- 
ization is first ; and 

Whereas, Mortals must learn to lose their esti- 
mate of the powers that are not ordained of God, 
and attain the bliss of loving unselfishly, working 
patiently, and conquering all that is unlike Christ 
and the example he gave ; therefore 

Hesolved, That we thank the State for its 
charter, which is the only one ever granted to a legal 
college for teaching the Science of Mind healing; 
that we thank the public for its liberal patronage. 
And everlasting gratitude is due to the President, 
for her great and noble work, which we believe 
will prove a healing for the nations, and bring all 
men to a knowledge of the true God, uniting 
them in one common brotherhood. 

After due deliberation and earnest discussion it 
was unanimously voted : That as all debts of the 
corporation have been paid, it is deemed best to 



COLLEGE CLOSED. 



61 



dissolve this corporation, and the same is hereby 
dissolved. 

C. A. Frye, Clerk. 

When God impelled me to set a price on my 
instruction in Christian Science Mind-healing, 
I could think of no financial equivalent for an 
impartation of a knowledge of that divine 
power which heals ; but I was led to name three 
hundred dollars as the price for each pupil in 
one course of lessons at my college, — a start- 
ling sum for tuition lasting barely three weeks. 
This amount greatly troubled me. I shrank 
from asking it, but was finally led, by a strange 
providence, to accept this fee. 

God has since shown me, in multitudinous 
ways, the wisdom of this decision; and I beg 
disinterested people to ask my loyal students 
if they consider three hundred dollars any real 
equivalent for my instruction during twelve 
half-days, or even in half as many lessons. Nev- 
ertheless, my list of indigent charity scholars is 
very large, and I have had as many as seventeen 
in one class. 



62 RETROSPECTION AND INTROSPECTION. 

Loyal students speak with delight of their 
pupilage, and of what it has done for them, — and, 
for others, through them. By loyalty in students 
I mean this, — allegiance to God, subordination 
of the human to the divine, steadfast justice, and 
strict adherence to divine Truth and Love. 

I see clearly that students in Christian 
Science should, at present, continue to organize 
churches, schools, and associations for the 
furtherance and unfolding of Truth, and that 
my necessity is not necessarily theirs ; but it 
was the Father's opportunity for furnishing a 
new rule of order in Divine Science, and the 
blessings which arose therefrom. Students are 
not environed with such obstacles as were 
encountered in the beginning of pioneer work. 

In December, 1889, I gave a lot of land in 
Boston to my student, Mr. Ira O. Knapp of Ros- 
lindale, — then valued at about fifteen thousand 
dollars, and rising in value, — to be appropriated 
for the erection, and building on the premises 
thereby conveyed, of a church edifice to be used 
in the interest of Christian Science. 



Qetjcral JKssociaiiot)$ t ai?d Our JVtacjazfr?e* 

TTOR many successive years I have endeavored 
to find new ways and means for the pro- 
motion and expansion of scientific Mind-healing, 
seeking to broaden its channels, and, if possible, 
to build a hedge round about it, that should 
shelter its perfections from the contaminating 
influences of those who have a small portion of 
its letter, and less of its Spirit. At the same 
time I have worked to provide a home for 
every true seeker and honest worker in this 
vineyard of Truth. 

To meet the broader wants of humanity, and 
provide folds for the sheep that were without 
shepherds, I suggested to my students, in 1886, 
the propriety of forming a National Chkistian 
Scientist Association. This was immediately 
done, and delegations from the Christian Scien- 
tist Association of the Massachusetts Meta- 
physical College, and from branch associations 
in other States, met in general convention at 
New York City, February 11, 1886. 



64 RETROSPECTION AND INTROSPECTION. 

The first official organ of the Christian 
Scientist Association was called Journal of 
Christian Science. I started it, April, 1883, 
as editor and publisher. 

To the National Christian Scientist Associa- 
tion, at its meeting in Cleveland, Ohio, June, 
1889, I sent a letter, presenting to its loyal 
members the Christian Science Journal, as it 
was now called, and the funds belonging 
thereto. This monthly magazine had been 
made successful and prosperous under difficult 
circumstances, and was designed to bear aloft 
the standard of genuine Christian Science. 



FaitI? Cure. 

TT is often asked: Why are faith-cures some- 
times more speedy than some of the cures 
wrought through Christian Scientists? Be- 
cause faith is belief, and not understanding ; 
and it is easier to believe, than to understand 
spiritual Truth. It demands less cross-bear- 
ing, self-renunciation, and Divine Science to 
admit the claims of the corporeal senses, and 
appeal to God for relief through a humanized 
conception of His power, than to deny these 
claims, and learn the divine way, drinking Jesus' 
cup, being baptized with his baptism, gaining 
the end through persecution and purity. 

Millions are believing in God, or Good, 
without bearing the fruits of goodness, not hav- 
ing reached its Science. Belief is virtually 
blindness, when it admits Truth without under- 
standing it. Blind belief cannot say with the 
apostle, "I know whom I have believed." 
There is danger in this mental state called be- 
lief ; for if Truth is admitted, but not under- 

65 



66 RETROSPECTION AND INTROSPECTION. 

stood, it may be lost, and error may enter 
through this same channel of ignorant belief. 
The faith-cure has devout followers, whose 
Christian practice is far in advance of their 
theory. 

The work of healing, in the Science of Mind, 
is the most sacred and salutary power which 
can be wielded. My Christian students, im- 
pressed with the true sense of the great work 
before them, enter this strait and narrow path, 
and work conscientiously. 

Let us follow the example of Jesus, the 
Master Metaphysician, and gain sufficient knowl- 
edge of error to destroy it with Truth. Evil is 
not mastered by evil ■, it can only be overcome 
with Good. This brings out the nothingness of 
evil ; and the eternal Somethingness, vindicates 
the Divine Principle, and improves the race of 
of Adam. 



Fout)daiiOt) Stor)c$+ 

TITHE following ideas of Deity, antagonized 
by finite theories, doctrines, and hy- 
potheses, I found to be demonstrable rules in 
Christian Science, and that we must abide 
by them. 

Whatever diverges from the One Divine 
Mind, or God, — or divides Mind into minds, 
Spirit into spirits, Soul into souls, and Being 
into beings, — is a misstatement of the unerring 
divine Principle of Science, which interrupts 
the meaning of the omnipotence, omniscience, 
and omnipresence of Spirit, and is of human, 
instead of divine origin. 

War is waged between the evidences of 
Spirit and the evidences of the five physical 
senses ; and this contest must go on until peace 
be declared by the final triumph of Spirit in 
immutable harmony. Divine Science disclaims 
sin, sickness, and death, on the basis of the 
omnipotence and omnipresence of God, or 
Divine Good. 

67 



68 RETROSPECTION AND INTROSPECTION. 

All consciousness is Mind, and Mind is God. 
Hence there is but one Mind; and that one is 
the infinite Good, supplying all Mind by the 
reflection, not the subdivision, of God. What- 
ever else claims to be mind, or consciousness, 
is untrue. The sun sends forth light, but not 
suns; so God reflects Himself, or Mind, but 
does not subdivide Mind, or Good, into minds, 
good and evil. Divine Science demands mighty 
wrestlings with mortal beliefs, as we sail into 
the eternal haven over the unfathomable sea of * 
possibilities. 

Neither ancient nor modern philosophy fur- 
nishes a Scientific basis for the Science 
of Mind-healing. Plato believed he had a 
soul which must be doctored, in order to heal 
his body. This would be like correcting the 
principle of music, for the purpose of destroy- 
ing discord. Principle is right; it is practice 
that is wrong. Soul is right; it is the flesh 
that is evil. Soul is the synonym of Spirit, 
God ; hence there is but one Soul, and that 
one is infinite. If that pagan philosopher had 



FOUNDATION STONES. by 

known that physical sense, not Soul, causes all 
bodily ailments, his philosophy would have 
yielded to Science. 

Man shines by borrowed light. He reflects 
God as his Mind, and this reflection is Sub- 
stance, — the Substance of Good. Matter is 
substance in error, Spirit is Substance in Truth. 

Evil, or error, is not Mind; but infinite Mind 
is sufficient to supply all manifestations of In- 
telligence. The notion of more than one Mind, 
or Life, is as unsatisfying as it is unscientific. 
All must be of God, and not our own, sepa- 
rated from him. 

Human systems of philosophy and religion 
are departures from Christian Science. Mistak- 
ing divine Principle for corporeal personality, 
ingrafting upon one First Cause such opposite 
effects as good and evil, health and sickness, 
life and death; making mortality the status 
and rule of divinity, — such methods can never 
reach the perfection and demonstration of Meta- 
physical, or Christian Science. 

Stating the Divine Principle, omnipotence 



70 RETROSPECTION AND INTROSPECTION. 

(omnis potens), and then departing from this 
statement, and taking the rule of finite matter, 
with which to work out the problem of infinity, 
or Spirit, all this is like trying to compensate 
for the absence of omnipotence, by a physical, 
false, and finite substitute. 

With our Master, life was not merely a sense 
of existence, but an accompanying sense of 
power that subdued matter and brought to 
light immortality, insomuch that the people 
" were astonished at his doctrines, for he taught 
them as one having authority, and not as the 
scribes." Life, as defined by Jesus, had no 
beginning; it was not the result of organiza- 
tion, or infused into matter ; it was Spirit. 



CHRISTIAN Science reveals the grand 
^ verity, that to believe man has a finite and 
erring mind, and consequently a mortal mind 
and soul and life, is error. Scientific terms 
have no contradictory significations. 

In Science, Life is not temporal, but eternal, 
without beginning or ending. The word Life 
never means that which is the source of death, 
and of good and evil. Such an inference is 
unscientific. It is like saying that addition 
means subtraction in one instance, and addi- 
tion in another, and then applying this rule to 
a demonstration of the science of numbers; 
even as mortals apply finite terms to God, in 
demonstration of Infinity. Life is a term used 
to indicate Deity ; and every other name for the 
Supreme Being, if properly employed, has the 
signification of Life. Whatever errs is mortal, 
and is the antipodes of Life, or God, and of 
health and holiness, both in idea and demon- 
stration. 

71 



72 RETROSPECTION AND INTROSPECTION. 

Christian Science reveals Mind, the only 
living and true God, and all that is made by Him, 
Mind, as harmonious, immortal, and spiritual : 
the five material senses define Mind and matter 
as distinct, but mutually dependent, each on the 
other, for intelligence and existence. Science 
defines Man as immortal, as coexistent and co- 
eternal with God, as made in His own image 
and likeness; material sense defines life as 
something apart from God, beginning and end- 
ing, and man as very far from the divine like- 
ness. Science reveals Life as a complete 
sphere, as eternal self-existent Mind; material 
sense defines life as a broken sphere, as organ- 
ized matter, and mind as something separate 
from God. Science reveals Spirit as all, aver- 
ing that there is nothing beside God ; material 
sense says that matter, His antipodes, is some- 
thing besides God. Material sense adds that 
the divine Spirit created matter, and that mat- 
ter and evil are as real as Spirit and Good. 

Christian Science reveals God and His idea 
as the all and only. It declares that evil is the 



THE GREAT REVELATION. 73 

absence of Good ; whereas, Good is God ever- 
present, and therefore evil is unreal, and Good 
is all that is real. Christian Science saith to 
the wave and storm, "Be still," and there is a 
great calm. Material sense asks, in its igno- 
rance of Science, "When will the raging of the 
material elements cease? " Science saith to all 
manner of disease : " Know that God is all-power 
and all-presence, and there is nothing beside 
Him," and the sick are healed. Material 
sense saith: "Oh, when will my sufferings 
cease ? Where is God ? Sickness is something be- 
sides Him, which He cannot, or does not, heal." 
Christian Science is the only sure basis of 
harmony. Material sense contradicts Science, 
for matter, and its so-called organizations, take 
no cognizance of the spiritual facts of the uni- 
verse, or of the real man and God. Christian 
Science declares that there is but one Truth, 
Life, Love, but one Spirit, Mind, Soul. Any 
attempt to divide these arises from the falli- 
bility of sense, from mortal man's ignorance, 
from enmity to God and Divine Science. 



74 RETROSPECTION AND INTROSPECTION. 

Christian Science declares that sickness is a 
belief, a latent fear, made manifest on the body 
in different forms of fear, or disease. This 
fear is formed unconsciously in the silent 
thought, as when you awaken from sleep and 
feel ill, experiencing the effect of a fear whose 
existence you do not realize; but if you fall 
asleep, actually conscious of the Truth of Chris- 
tian Science, — namely, that man's harmony is 
no more to be invaded than the rhythm of the 
universe, — you cannot awake in fear or suffer- 
ing of any sort. 

Science saith to Fear : " You are the cause of 
all sickness; but you are a self -constituted 
falsity, — you are darkness, nothingness. You 
are without 'hope and without God in the 
world.' You do not exist, and have no right 
to exist, for 'perfect Love casteth out fear.' ' 

God is everywhere. "There is no speech 
nor language, where His voice is not heard"; 
and this voice is Truth that destroys error, and 
Love that casts out fear. 

Christian Science reveals the fact, that if 



THE GREAT REVELATION. 75 

suffering exists it is in the mortal mind only, 
for matter has no sensation and cannot suffer. 

If you rule out every sense of disease and 
suffering from mortal mind, it cannot be found 
in the body. 

Posterity will have the right to demand that 
Christian Science be stated and demonstrated 
in its godliness and grandeur, — that however 
little be taught or learned, that little shall be 
right. Let there be milk for babes, but let 
not the milk be adulterated. Unless this 
method be pursued, the Science of Christian 
Healing will again be lost, and human suffer- 
ing will increase. 

Test Christian Science by its effect on 
society, and you will find that the views here 
set forth — as to the illusion of sin, sickness, 
and death — bring forth better fruits of health, 
righteousness, and Life, than a belief in their 
reality has ever done. A demonstration of the 
unreality of evil destroys evil. 



Sit) f Sit)r)cr f ar)d Ecclesiastic^**?* 

T9THY do Christian Scientists say God and 
His idea are the only realities, and then 
insist on the need of healing sickness and sin? 
Because Christian Science heals sin as it heals 
sickness, by establishing the recognition that 
God is all, and there is none beside Him, — 
that all is good, and there is in reality no evil, 
neither sickness nor sin. We attack the sin- 
ner's belief in the pleasure of sin, alias, the 
reality of sin, which makes him a sinner, in 
order to destroy this belief and save him from 
sin ; and we attack the belief of the sick in the 
reality of sickness, in order to heal them. 
When we deny the authority of sin, we begin 
to sap it; for this denunciation must pre- 
cede its destruction. 

God is Good, hence goodness is something, 
for it represents God, the Life of man. Its op- 
posite, nothing, named evil, is nothing but a 
conspiracy against man's Life and goodness. 
Do you not feel bound to expose this conspiracy, 

76 



SIN, SINNER, AND ECCLESIASTICISM. 77 

and so to save man from it? Whosoever covers 
iniquity becomes accessory to it. Sin, as a 
claim, is more dangerous than sickness, more 
subtle, more difficult to heal. 

Saint Augustine once said, "The Devil is 
but the ape of God." Sin is worse than sick- 
ness; but recollect that it encourages sin to say 
"There is no sin," and leave the subject there. 

Sin ultimates in sinner, and in this sense they 
are one. You cannot separate sin from the sinner, 
nor the sinner from his sin. The sin is the 
sinner, and vice versa, for such is the unity of 
evil ; and together both sinner and sin will be 
destroyed by the supremacy of Good. This 
however does not annihilate man, for to efface 
sin, alias the sinner, brings to light, makes ap- 
parent, the real man, even God's "image and 
likeness." Need it be said that any opposite 
theory is heterodox to Divine Science, which 
teaches that Good is equally One and all, even 
as the opposite claim of evil is one. 

In Christian Science the fact is made obvi- 
ous, that the sinner and the sin are alike sim- 






78 RETROSPECTION AND INTROSPECTION. 

ply nothingness; and this view is supported 
by the Scripture, where the Psalmist saith : " He 
shall go to the generation of his fathers ; they 
shall never see light. Man that is in honor, 
and understandeth not, is like the beasts that 
perish." God's ways and works and thoughts 
have never changed, either in Principle or 
practice. 

Since there is in belief an illusion termed 
sin, which must be met and mastered, we 
classify sin, sickness, and death as illusions. 
They are supposititious claims of error; and 
error, being a false claim, they are no claims at 
all. It is Scientific to abide in conscious har- 
mony, in health-giving, deathless Truth and 
Love. To do this, mortals must first open 
their eyes to all the illusive forms, methods, 
and subtlety of error in order that the illusion, 
error, may be destroyed; if this is not done, 
mortals will become the victims of error. 

If Evangelical churches refuse fellowship 
with the Church of Christ, Scientist, or with 
Christian Science, they must rest their opinions 



SIN, SINNEK, AND ECCLESIASTICISM. 79 

of Truth and Love on the evidences of the 
physical senses, rather than on the teaching and 
practice of Jesus, or the works of the Spirit. 

Ritualism and dogma lead to self-righteous- 
ness and bigotry, which freeze out the spiritual 
element. Pharisaism killeth; Spirit giveth 
Life. The odors of persecution, tobacco, and 
alcohol are not the sweet-smelling savor of 
Truth and Love. Feasting the senses, gratifi- 
cation of appetite and passion, have no warrant 
in the Gospel or the Decalogue. Mortals must 
take up the cross if they would follow Christ, 
and "worship the Father in spirit and in 
truth." 

The Jewish religion was not spiritual; 
hence Jesus denounced it. If the religion of 
to-day is constituted of such elements as of old 
ruled Christ out of the synagogues, it will con- 
tinue to avoid whatever follows the example of 
our Lord, and prefers Christ to Creed. Chris- 
tian Science is the pure evangelic truth. It ac- 
cords with the trend and tenor of Christ's teach- 
ing and example, while it demonstrates the 



80 RETROSPECTION AND INTROSPECTION. 

power of Christ as taught in the four gospels. 
Truth, casting out evils and healing the 
sick; Love fulfilling the law, and keeping man 
unspotted from the world, — these practical 
manifestations of Christianity constitute the 
only Evangelism, and they need no creed. 

As well expect to determine, without a tele- 
scope, the magnitude and distance of the stars, 
as to expect to obtain health, harmony, and 
holiness through an unspiritual and unhealing 
religion. Christianity reveals God as ever- 
present Truth and Love, to be utilized in heal- 
ing the sick, in casting out error, in raising 
the dead. 

Christian Science gives vitality to religion, 
which is no longer buried in materiality. It 
raises men from a material sense, into the 
spiritual understanding and Scientific demon- 
stration of God. 



Tfye fiuryat) Concept, 

OIN existed as a false claim before the human 
r^ concept of sin was formed ; hence one's 
concept of error is not the whole of error. 
The human thought does not constitute sin, 
but vice versa, sin constituted the human or 
physical concept. 

Sin is both concrete, and abstract. Sin was, 
and is, the lying supposition that life, substance, 
and intelligence are both material and spiritual, 
and yet are separate from God. The first 
iniquitous manifestation of sin was a finity. The 
finite was self-arrayed against the Infinite, the 
mortal against Immortality, and a sinner was 
the antipode of God. 

Silencing self, alias rising above corporeal 
personality, is what reforms the sinner and 
destroys sin. In the ratio that the testimony of 
material personal sense ceases, sin diminishes 
until the false claim called sin is finally lost for 
lack of witness. 

The sinner created neither himself nor sin, 

81 



82 RETROSPECTION AND INTROSPECTION. 

but sin created the sinner ; that is, error made 
its man mortal, and this mortal was the image 
and likeness of evil, not of Good. Therefore 
the lie was, and is, collective as well as indi- 
vidual. It was in no way contingent on Adam's 
thought, but supposititiously self-created. In 
the words of our Master, it, the " Devil," [alias 
evil] "was a liar, and the father of it." , 

This mortal material concept was never a 
creator, although as a serpent, it claimed to 
originate in the name of " the Lord," or Good, 
— original evil ; second, in the name of human 
concept, it claimed to beget the offspring of 
evil, alias, an evil offspring. However the 
human concept never was, neither indeed can be 
the father of man. Even the spiritual idea, or 
ideal man, is not a parent though he reflects 
the infinity of Good. The great difference 
between these opposites is, that the human 
material concept is unreal, and the divine con- 
cept or idea is spiritually real. One is false, 
while the other is true. One is temporal, but 
the other is eternal. 



THE HUMAN CONCEPT. 83 

Our Master instructed his students to "call 
no man your father upon the earth ; for one 
is your Father which is in Heaven." Matt, 
xxiii. 9. 

" Science and Health," the text book of 
Christian Science, treats of the human concept, 
and the transference of thought, as follows : 

" How can matter originate or transmit 
mind?" We answer that it cannot. Darkness 
and doubt encompass thought, so long as it 
bases creation on materiality, p. 531. 

In reality there is no mortal mind, and con- 
sequently no transference of mortal thought 
and will-power. In Christian Science man can 
do no harm, for his thoughts are true thoughts, 
passing from God to man. p. 283. 

Man is the offspring of Spirit. The beauti- 
ful, good, and pure constitute his ancestry. 
His origin is not, like that of mortals, in brute 
instinct, nor does he pass through material con- 
ditions prior to reaching intelligence. Spirit 
is his primitive and ultimate source of Being, 
and God is his Father, p. 273. 



84 RETROSPECTION AND INTROSPECTION. 

The parent of all human discord was the 
Adam-dream, the deep sleep, oblivion, and illu- 
sion, portrayed in the belief that life and intel- 
ligence originate from and pass into matter. 
This pantheistic error, first called the serpent, 
insists still upon the opposite of Truth, saying, 
"'I will make you as gods;" that is, "I will 
make error itself to be as real and eternal as 
Truth. I will put spirit into what I call mat- 
ter, and it shall seem to have life, as much as 
God, Spirit, who is Life." This error has led 
to bad results. Its life is found to be not Life, 
but only a transient sense of existence, which 
ends in death, pp. 202, 203. 

When will the error of believing that there 
is Life in matter — and that sin, sickness, and 
death are creations of God — be unmasked ? 
When will it be understood that matter has no 
intelligence, life, or sensation, and that the 
opposite belief is the prolific source of all suffer- 
ing? God created all through Mind, and made 
all perfect and eternal. Where then is the 
necessity for recreation or procreation? p. 101. 



THE HUMAN CONCEPT. 85. 

Above error's awful din, blackness, and void, 
the voice of Truth still calls : Adam, where 
art thou ? Consciousness, where art thou ? Art 
thou dwelling in the belief that Mind is in mat- 
ter, and that evil is mind ? or art thou in the liv- 
ing faith that there can be no other mind but God, 
and keeping His commandment? p. 202, 203. 

Mortal mind inverts the true likeness, and 
confers animal names and natures upon its own 
misconceptions. Ignorant of the origin and 
operations of mortal mind, — that is, of itself, — 
this mentality puts forth its own qualities, and 
then claims God as their author ; ... it usurps 
the deific prerogatives, and is an attempted in- 
fringement on Infinity." p. 494. 

We do not question the authenticity of the 
Scriptural narrative of the Virgin Mother, and 
Bethlehem babe, and the Messianic mission of 
Christ Jesus ; but in our time, no Christian 
Scientist will give chimerical wings to his 
imagination, or advance speculative theories as 
to the recurrence of such events. 

No person can take the individual place of 



86 RETROSPECTION AND INTROSPECTION. 

the Virgin Mary. No person can compass 
or fulfill the individual mission of Jesus of 
Nazareth. Each individual must fill his own 
niche in time and eternity. 

The second appearing of Jesus is unquestion- 
ably, the spiritual advent of the advancing idea 
of God, as prefigured in the Ascension of Jesus, 
when the fleshly form, the human concept or 
material sense of birth and being, disappeared. 

The scientific ultimate of the God-idea, called 
man, must be individual, incorporeal, infinite, 
even the reflection " image and likeness " of the 
infinite God. 

The right teacher of Christian Science lives 
the Truth he teaches. Pre-eminent among men, 
he virtually stands at the head of all sanitary, 
civil, moral, and religious reform. Such a post 
of duty, unpierced by vanity, exalts a mortal 
beyond human praise, or monuments which 
weigh dust, and humbles him with the tax it 
raises on calamity to open the gates of Heaven. 
It is not the forager on other's wisdom, that God 
thus crowns, but he who is obedient to the 



THE HUMAN CONCEPT. 87 

divine command : " Render therefore unto 
Caesar the things that are Caesar's and to God 
the things that are God's." 

Great temptations beset an ignorant or an 
unprincipled mind-practice in opposition to the 
straight and narrow path of Christian Science. 
Promiscuous mental treatment, without the 
consent or knowledge of the individual treated, 
is an error of much magnitude. People unaware 
of the indications of mental treatment, know not 
what is affecting them, and thus may be robbed 
of their individual rights, — freedom of choice 
and self-government. Who is willing to be 
subjected to such an influence? Ask the un- 
bridled mind-manipulator if he would consent 
to this, and if not, then he is knowingly trans- 
gressing Christ's command. He who secretly 
manipulates mind without the permission of man, 
or God, is not dealing justly and loving mercy 
according to " pure and undefiled religion." 

Sinister and selfish motives entering into 
mental practice are dangerous incentives, they 
proceed from false convictions, and a fatal igno- 



88 RETROSPECTION AND INTROSPECTION. 

ranee. These are the tares growing side by- 
side with the wheat that must be recognized, and 
uprooted, before the wheat can be garnered and 
Christian Science demonstrated. 

Secret mental efforts to obtain help from one 
who is unaware of this attempt, demoralizes the 
person who does this, the same as other forms 
of stealing, and will end in destroying health 
and morals. 

In the practice of Christian Science one cannot 
impart a mental influence that hazards another's 
happiness, nor interfere with the rights of the 
individual. To disregard the welfare of others 
is contrary to the law of God ; therefore, it 
deteriorates one's ability to do good, to benefit 
himself and mankind. 

The Psalmist vividly portrays the result of 
secret faults, presumptious sins, and self-decep- 
tion, in these words : " How are they brought 
into desolation as in a moment ! They are 
utterly consumed with terrors." 



Personality* 

TITHE immortal man being spiritual, individual 
and eternal, his mortal opposite must be 
material, corporeal, and temporal. Physical 
personality is finite; but God is infinite. He 
is without materiality, without finiteness of 
form or Mind. 

Limitations are put off in proportion as the 
fleshly nature disappears, and man is found 
in the reflection of Spirit. 

This great fact leads into profound depths. 
The material human concept grew beautifully 
less as I floated into more spiritual latitudes 
and purer realms of thought. 

From that hour personal corporeality became 
less to me than it is to people who fail to appre- 
ciate individual character. I endeavored to lift 
thought above physical personality, or selfhood 
in matter, to man's spiritual individuality in 
God, — in the true Mind, where sensible evil 
is lost in supersensible Good. This is the only 
way whereby the false personality is laid off. 



90 RETROSPECTION AND INTROSPECTION. 

He who clings to personality, or perpetually 
warns you of " personality," wrongs it, or 
terrifies people over it, and is the sure victim of 
his own corporeality. To constantly scrutinize 
physical personality, or accuse people of being 
unduly personal, is like the sick talking sick- 
ness. Such errancy betrays a violent and 
egotistical personality, increases one's sense of 
corporeality, and begets a fear of the senses, and 
a perpetually egotistical sensibility. 

He who does this is ignorant of the meaning 
of the word personality, and defines it by his 
own corpus sine pectore (soulless body), and fails 
to distinguish the individual, or real man from 
the false sense of corporeality, or egotistic self. 

My own corporeal personality afflicteth me 
not wittingly; for I desire never to think of it, 
and it cannot think of me. 



Plagiarist*^ 
TITHE various forms of book-borrowing with- 
out credit spring from this illconcealed 
question in mortal mind, Who shall be greatest? 
This error violates the law given by Moses, it 
tramples upon Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, it 
does violence to the ethics of Christian Science. 

Why withhold my name, while appropriating 
my language and ideas, but give credit when 
citing from the works of other authors ? 

Life and its ideals are inseparable, and one's 
writings on ethics, and demonstration of Truth, 
are not, cannot be, understood or taught by 
those who persistently misunderstand or mis- 
represent the author. Jesus said: " For there 
is no man which shall do a miracle in my name, 
that can lightly speak evil of me." 

If one's spiritual ideal is comprehended and 
loved, the borrower from it is embraced in 
the author's own mental mood, and is there- 
fore honest. The Science of Mind excludes 
opposites, and rests on unity. 

It is proverbial that dishonesty retards spirit- 

91 



92 RETROSPECTION AND INTROSPECTION. 

ual growth and strikes at the heart of Truth. 
If a student at Harvard College has studied 
a textbook written by his teacher, is he entitled, 
when he leaves the University, to write out as 
his own the substance of this textbook ? There 
is no warrant in Common Law and no permis- 
sion in the Gospel for plagiarizing an author's 
ideas and their words. Christian Science is 
not copyrighted ; nor would protection by copy- 
right be requisite, if mortals obeyed God's 
law of manright. A student can write volu- 
minous works on Science without trespassing, 
if he writes honestly, and he cannot dishonestly 
compose Christian Science. The Bible is not 
stolen, though it is cited, and quoted deferen- 
tially. 

Thoughts, touched with the Spirit and Word 
of Christian Science, gravitate naturally toward 
Truth. Therefore the mind to which this Science 
was revealed must have risen to the altitude 
which perceived a light beyond what others saw. 

The spiritually minded meet on the stairs 
which lead up to spiritual Love. This affec- 



PLAGIARISM. 



93 



tion, so far from being personal worship, fulfils 
the law of Love which Paul enjoined upon the 
Galatians. This is the Mind "which was also 
in Christ Jesus," and knows no material limita- 
tions. It is the unity of Good and bond of 
perfectness. This just affection serves to con- 
stitute the Mind-healer a wonder-worker, — as 
of old, on the Pentecost Day, when the disci- 
ples were of one accord. 

He who gains the God-crowned summit of 
Christian Science, never abuses the corporeal 
personality, but uplifts it. He thinks of every 
one in his real quality, and sees each mortal in 
an impersonal depict. 

I have long remained silent on a grow- 
ing evil in plagiarism; but if I do not insist 
upon the strictest observance of moral law and 
order in Christian Scientists, I become responsi- 
ble, as a teacher, for laxity in discipline and 
lawlessness in literature. Pope was right in 
saying, "An honest man's the noblest work of 
God;" and Ingersol's repartee has its moral: 
"An honest God's the noblest work of man." 



JKdrr)or)iiiot)+ 

TITHE neophyte in Christian Science acts like 
a diseased physique, — being too fast or 
too slow. He is inclined to do either too much 
or too little. In healing and teaching the stu- 
dent has not yet achieved the entire wisdom of 
Mind-practice. The textual explanation of 
this practice is complete in Science and 
Health ; and Scientific practice makes perfect, 
for it is governed by its Principle, and not by 
human opinions ; but carnal and sinister motives, 
entering into this practice, will prevent the 
demonstration of Christian Science. 

I recommend students not to read so-called 
scientific works, antagonistic to Christian 
Science, which advocate materialistic systems; 
because such works and words becloud the right 
sense of Metaphysical Science. 

The rules of Mind-healing are wholly Christ- 
like and spiritual. Therefore the adoption of 
a worldly policy or a resort to subterfuge in the 
statement of the Science of Mind-healing, or 

94 



ADMONITION. 95 

any name given to it other than Christian 
Science, or an attempt to demonstrate the facts 
of this Science other than is stated in Science 
and Health — is a departure from the Science 
of Mind-healing. To becloud mortals, or for 
yourself to hide from God, is to conspire against 
the blessings otherwise conferred, against your 
own success and final happiness, against the 
progress of the human race as well as against 
honest Metaphysical theory and practice. 

Not by the hearing of the ear, is spiritual 
Truth learned and loved ; nor cometh this appre- 
hension from the experiences of others. We 
glean spiritual harvests from our own material 
losses. In this consuming heat false images 
are effaced from the canvas of mortal mind; 
and thus does the material pigment beneath 
fade into invisibility. 

The signs for the wayfarer in Divine Science 
lie in meekness, in unselfish motives and acts, 
in shuffling off scholastic rhetoric, in ridding the 
thought of effete doctrines, in the purification of 
the affections and desires. 



96 RETROSPECTION AND INTROSPECTION. 

Dishonesty, envy, and mad ambition are 
"lusts of the flesh," which uproot the germs of 
growth in Science, and leave the inscrutable 
problem of Being unsolved. Through the 
channels of material sense, of worldly policy, 
pomp, and pride, cometh no success in Truth. 
If beset with misguided emotions, we shall be 
stranded on the quicksands of worldly commo- 
tion, and practically come short of the wisdom 
requisite for teaching and demonstrating the 
victory over self and sin. 

Be temperate in thought, word, and deed. 
Meekness and temperance are the jewels of 
Love, set in wisdom. Restrain untempered 
zeal. "Learn to labor and to wait." Of old 
the children of Israel were saved by patient 
waiting. 

" The Kingdom of Heaven sufTereth violence, 
and the violent take it by force ! " said Jesus. 
Therefore are its spiritual gates not captured, 
nor its golden streets invaded. 

We recognize this kingdom, the reign of har- 
mony, within us, by an unselfish affection or 



ADMONITION. 97 

love, for this is the pledge of divine Good 
and the insignia of Heaven. This also is pro- 
verbial, that though eternal justice be graciously 
gentle, yet it may seem severe. 

For whom the Lord loveth, He chasteneth, 
And scourgeth every son whom He receiveth. 

As the poets in different languages have 
expressed it: 

Though the mills of God grind slowly, 
Yet they grind exceeding small ; 

Though with patience He stands waiting, 
With exactness grinds He all. 

Though the divine rebuke is effectual to the 
pulling down of sin's strongholds, it may stir 
the human heart to resist Truth, before this 
heart becomes obediently receptive of the 
heavenly discipline. If the Christian Scientist 
recognize the mingled sternness and gentleness 
which permeate justice and love, he will not 
scorn the timely reproof, but will so absorb it 
that this warning will be within him a spring, 
welling up into unceasing spiritual rise and 
progress. Patience and obedience, win the 
golden scholarship of experimental tuition. 



98 RETROSPECTION" AND INTROSPECTION. 

The kindly shepherd of the East carries his 
lambs in his arms to the sheepcot, but the older 
sheep pass into the fold under his compelling 
rod. He who sees the door and turns away 
from it, is guilty, while innocence strayeth 
yearningly. 

There is no greater miracles known to earth, 
than perfection, and an unbroken friendship. 
We love our friends, but ofttimes we lose them 
in proportion to our affection. The sacrifices 
made for others are not unfrequently met by 
envy, ingratitude, and enmity, which smite the 
heart, and threaten to paralyze its beneficence. 
The unavailing tear is shed both for the living 
and the dead. 

Nothing except sin, in the students them- 
selves, can separate them from me. There- 
fore we should guard thought and action, 
keeping them in accord with Christ, and our 
friendship will surely continue. 

The letter of the law of God, separated from 
its Spirit, tends to demoralize mortals, apd 
must be corrected by a diviner sense of liberty 



ADMONITION. 99 

and light. The spirit of Truth extinguishes 
false thinking, feeling, and acting ; and falsity 
must thus decay, ere spiritual sense, affectional 
consciousness, and genuine goodness become so 
apparent as to be well understood. 

After the supreme advent of Truth in the 
heart, there comes an overwhelming sense of 
error's vacuity, of the blunders which arise 
from wrong apprehension. The enlightened 
heart loaths error, and casts it aside; or else 
that heart is consciously untrue to the light, 
faithless to itself and to others, and so sinks 
into deeper darkness. Said Jesus: "If the 
light that is in thee be darkness, how great is 
that darkness ! " and Shakespeare puts this 
pious counsel into a father's mouth: 

This above all : To thine own self be true ; 
And it must follow, as the night the day, 
Thou canst not then be false to any man. 

A realization of the shifting scenes of human 
happiness, and of the frailty of mortal anticipa- 
tions, — such as first led me to the feet of 
Christian Science, — seems to be requisite at 



100 RETROSPECTION AND INTROSPECTION. 

every stage of advancement. Though our first 
lessons are changed, modified, broadened, yet 
their core is constantly renewed; as the law 
of the chord remains unchanged, whether we 
are dealing with a simple Latour exercise, or 
with the vast Wagner Trilogy. 

A general rule is, that my students should 
not allow their movements to be controlled by 
other students, even if they are teachers and 
practitioners of the same blessed faith. The 
exception to this rule should be very rare. 

The widest power and strongest growth have 
always been attained by those loyal students 
who rest on divine Principle for guidance, not 
on themselves, and who locate permanently in 
one section, and adhere to the orderly methods 
herein delineated. 

At this period my students should locate in 
large cities, in order to do the greatest good to 
the greatest number, and therein abide. The 
population of our principal cities is ample to 
supply many practitioners, teachers, and preach- 
ers, with work. This fact interferes in no way 



ADMONITION. 101 

with, the prosperity of each worker; rather does 
it represent an accumulation of power ori his 
side which promotes the ease and welfare of the 
workers. Their liberated capacities of mind en- 
able Christian Scientists to consummate much 
good or else evil; therefore, their examples 
either excel or fall short of other religionists ; 
and they must be found dwelling together in 
harmony if even they compete with ecclesias- 
tical fellowship and friendship. 

It is often asked, which revision of Science 
and Health is the best? The arrangement 
of my last revision, in 1890, makes the subject 
matter clearer than any previous edition, and 
it is therefore better adapted to spiritualize 
thought and elucidate Scientific healing and 
teaching. It has already been proven that this 
volume is accomplishing the divine purpose to 
a remarkable degree. The wise Christian 
Scientist will commend students and patients 
to the teachings of this book, and the healing 
efficacy thereof, rather than try to centre their 
interest on himself. 



102 RETROSPECTION AND INTROSPECTION. 

Students whom I have taught, are seldom 
benefitted by the teachings of other students, 
for scientific foundations are already laid in 
their minds which ought not to be tampered 
with. Also, they are prepared to receive the 
infinite instructions afforded by the Bible, and 
my books, which mislead no one, and are their 
best guides. 

The student may mistake in his conception 
of Truth, and this error, in an honest heart, is 
sure to be corrected. But if he misinterprets 
the text to his pupils, and communicates, even 
unintentionally, his misconception of Truth, 
thereafter he will find it more difficult to 
rekindle his own light, or to enlighten them. 
Hence, as a rule, the student should explain 
only Recapitulation, the chapter for the class- 
room, and leave Science and Health to God's 
daily interpretation. 

Christian Scientists should take their text- 
book into the school-room the same as other 
teachers ; they should ask questions from it, and 
be answered according to it, — occasionally 



ADMONITION. 103 

reading aloud from the book to corroborate what 
they teach. It is also highly important that 
their pupils study each lesson before the 
recitation. 

That these essential points are ever omitted, 
is anomalous, when we consider the necessity of 
thoroughly understanding Science, and the 
present liability of deviating from absolute 
Christian Science. 

Centuries will intervene before the statement 
of the inexhaustible topics of Science and 
Health is sufficiently understood to be fully 
demonstrated. 

The teacher himself should continue to study 
this text-book, and to spiritualize his own 
thoughts and human life from this open fount 
of Truth and Love. 

He who sees clearly and enlightens other 
minds most readily, keeps his own lamp trimmed 
and burning. Throughout his entire explana- 
tions he strictly adheres to the teachings in the 
chapter on " Recapitulation." When closing 
the class* each member should own a copy of 



104 RETROSPECTION AND INTROSPECTION. 

Science and Health, and continue to study 
and assimilate this inexhaustible subject — 
Christian Science. 

The opinions of men cannot be substituted 
for God's revelation. In times past, arrogant 
pride in attempting to steady the ark of Truth, 
obscured even the power and glory of the Scrip- 
tures, — to which Science and Health is the 
Key. 

That teacher does most for his students, who 
divests himself most of pride and self ; and by 
reason thereof, is able to empty his students' 
minds of error that they may be filled with 
Truth. Thus doing, posterity will call him 
blessed, and the tired tongue of history be 
enriched. 

The less the teacher personally controls other 
minds, and the more he trusts them to the divine 
Truth and Love, the better it will be for both 
teacher and student. 

A teacher should only take charge of his own 
pupils and patients, and of those who volun- 
tarily place themselves under his direction ; he 



ADMONITION. 105 

should avoid leaving his own regular institute, 
or place of labor, or expending his labor where 
there are other teachers who should be specially 
responsible for doing their own work well. 

Teachers of Christian Science will find it 
advisable to band together their students into 
associations, to continue the organization of 
churches, and at present they can employ any 
other organic operative method that may com- 
mend itself as useful to the cause and beneficial 
to mankind. 

Of this, also, rest assured that books and 
teaching are but a ladder let down from the 
Heaven of Truth and Love, upon which angelic 
thoughts ascend and descend, bearing on their 
pinions of light the Christ Spirit. 

Guard yourselves against the subtly hidden 
suggestion that the Son of Man will be glorified, 
or humanity benefitted, by any deviation from 
the order prescribed by supernal grace. Seek 
to occupy no position whereto you do not feel 
that God ordains you. Never forsake your post 
without due deliberation and light, but always 



106 RETROSPECTION AND INTROSPECTION. 

wait for God's finger to point the way. The 
loyal Christian Scientist is incapable alike of 
abusing the practice of Mind-healing, or of 
healing on a material basis. 

The tempter is vigilant, only awaiting an 
opportunity to divide the ranks of Christian 
Science, and scatter the sheep abroad; but "if 
God be for us, who can be against us ? " The 
cause, our cause, is highly prosperous, rapidly 
spreading over the globe ; and the morrow will 
crown the effort of to-day with a diadem of 
gems from the New Jerusalem. 



Exemplification 

TT70 energize wholesome spiritual warfare, to 
rebuke vainglory, to offset boastful empti- 
ness, to crown patient toil, and rejoice in the 
spirit and power of Christian Science, we must 
ourselves be true. There is but one way of 
doing good, and that is to do it! There is but 
one way of being good, and that is to be 
good ! 

Art thou still unacquainted with thyself? 
Then be introduced to this self. " Know thy- 
self ! " as said the classic Grecian motto. Note 
well the falsity of this mortal self! Behold its 
vileness, and remember this poverty-stricken 
"stranger, that is within thy gates." Cleanse 
every stain from this wanderer's soiled gar- 
ments, wipe the dust from his feet and the tears 
from his eyes, that you may behold the real 
man, the fellow-saint of a holy household. 
There should be no blot on the escutcheon of 
our Christliness, when we offer our gift upon 
the altar. 

107 



108 RETROSPECTION AND INTROSPECTION. 

A student desiring growth in the knowledge 
of Truth, can and will obtain it by taking up 
his cross, and following Truth. If he does this 
not, and another one undertakes to carry his 
burden and do his work, the duty will not be 
accomplished. No one can save himself without 
God's help, and God will help each man who 
performs his own part. After this manner, and 
in no other way is every man cared for and 
blessed. To the unwise helper our Master 
said, " Follow me, and let the dead bury their 
dead." 

The poet's line, "Order is Heaven's first 
law," is so eternally true, so axiomatic, that 
it has become a truism ; and its wisdom is as 
obvious in religion and scholarship, as in 
astronomy or mathematics. 

Experience has taught me that the rules of 
Christian Science can be far more thoroughly 
and readily acquired by regularly settled and 
systematic workers, than by unsettled and spas- 
modic efforts. Genuine Christian Scientists 
are, or should be, the most systematic and law- 



EXEMPLIFICATION. 109 

abiding people on earth, because their religion 
demands implicit adherence to fixed rules, in 
the orderly demonstration thereof. Let some 
of these rules be here stated. 

I. Christian Scientists are to "heal the sick " 
as the Master commanded. 

In so doing they must follow the divine 
order, as prescribed by Jesus, — never, in any 
way, to trespass upon the rights of their 
neighbors, but to obey the celestial injunction, 
"Whatsoever ye would that men should do to 
you, do ye even so to them." 

In this orderly Scientific dispensation healers 
become a law unto themselves. They feel 
their own burdens less, and can therefore bear 
the weight of others' burdens, since it is only 
through the lens of their unselfishness that the 
sunshine of Truth, beams with such efficacy as 
to dissolve error. 

It is already understood that Christian Scien- 
tists will not receive a patient who is under the 
care of a regular physician, until he is done 
with the case and different aid is sought. The 



110 RETROSPECTION AND INTROSPECTION. 

same courtesy should be observed in the profes- 
sional intercourse of Christian Science healers 
with one another. 

II. Another command of the Christ, his prime 
command, was that his followers should "raise 
the dead." He lifted his own body from the 
sepulchre. In him, Truth called the physical 
man from the tomb to health, and the so-called 
dead forthwith emerged into a higher manifesta- 
tion of Life. 

The spiritual significance of this command, 
" Raise the dead, " most concerns mankind. It 
implies such an elevation of the understanding 
as will enable thought to apprehend the living 
beauty of Love, its practicality, its divine 
energies, its health-giving and Life-bestowing 
qualities, — yea, its power to demonstrate im- 
mortality. This end Jesus achieved, both by 
example and precept. 

III. This leads inevitably to a consideration 
of another part of Christian Science work, — a 
part which concerns us intimately, — preaching 
the Gospel. 



EXEMPLIFICATION. Ill 

This Evangelistic duty should not be so 
warped as to signify that we must or may go, 
uninvited, to work in other vineyards than our 
own. One would, or should, blush to enter 
unasked another's pulpit, and preach without 
the consent of the stated occupant of that pul- 
pit. The Lord's command means this, — that 
we should adopt the spirit of the Saviour's 
ministry, and abide in such a spiritual attitude 
as will draw men unto us. Itinerancy should 
not be allowed to clip the wings of Divine 
Science. Mind demonstrates omnipresence and 
omnipotence, but Mind revolves on a spiritual 
axis, and its power is displayed and its pres- 
ence felt in eternal stillness and immovable 
Love. The divine potency of this spiritual 
mode of Mind, and the hindrance opposed to it 
by material motion, is proven beyond a doubt in 
the practice of Mind-healing. 

In those days preaching and teaching were 
substantially one. There was no church preach- 
ing, in the modern sense of the term. Men 
assembled in the one Temple (at Jerusalem) 



112 RETROSPECTION" AND INTROSPECTION. 

for sacrificial ceremonies, not for sermons. 
Into the synagogues, scattered about in cities 
and villages, they went for liturgical worship, 
and instruction in the Mosaic Law. If one wor- 
shipper preached to the others, he did so in- 
formally, and because he was bidden to this 
privileged duty at that particular moment. It 
was the custom to pay this hortatory compli- 
ment to a stranger, or to a member who had 
been away from the neighborhood; as Jesus was 
once asked to exhort, when he had been some 
time absent from Nazareth, but once again 
entered the synagogue which he had frequented 
in childhood. 

Jesus' method was to instruct his own stu- 
dents; and he watched and guarded them unto 
the end, even according to his promise, "Lo, I 
am with you alway!" Nowhere in the four 
Evangelists will Christian Scientists find any 
precedent for employing another student to 
take charge of their students, or for neglecting 
their own students, in order to enlarge their 
sphere of action. 



EXEMPLIFICATION. 113 

Above all trespass not intentionally upon 
other people's thoughts, by endeavoring to in- 
fluence other minds to any action not first made 
known to them, or sought by them. Corporeal 
and selfish influence is human, fallible, and 
temporary ; but incorporeal impulsion is divine, 
infallible, and eternal. The student should be 
most careful not to thrust aside Science, and 
shade God's window which lets in light, or 
seek to stand in God's stead. 

Does the faithful shepherd forsake the lambs, 
retaining his salary for tending the home flock, 
while he is serving another fold? There is no 
evidence to show that Jesus ever entered the 
towns whither he sent his disciples, — no evi- 
dence that he there taught a few hungry ones, 
and then left them to starve or to stray. To 
these selected ones (like " the elect lady " to 
whom Saint John addressed one of his epistles) 
he gave personal instruction, and gave in plain 
words, until they were able to fulfil his behest 
and depart on their united pilgrimages. This 
he did, even though one of the twelve whom 



114 RETROSPECTION AND INTROSPECTION. 

he kept near himself betrayed him, and others 
forsook him. 

The true mother never willingly neglects her 
children in their early and sacred hours, con- 
signing them to the care of nurse or stranger. 
Who can feel and comprehend the needs of her 
babe like the ardent mother ? What other heart 
yearns with her solicitude, endures with her 
patience, waits with her hope, and labors with 
her love, to promote the welfare and happi- 
ness of her children? Thus must the Mother 
in Israel give all her hours to those first, sacred 
tasks, till her children can walk steadfastly in 
wisdom's ways. 

One of my students wrote to me : "I believe 
the proper thing for us to do is to follow, as 
nearly as we can, in the path you have pur- 
sued ! " It is gladdening to find, in such a 
student, one of the children of light. " There- 
fore leave with Good the government of man. 
Again strive not to shade God's window 
which lets in light, or seek to stand in God's 
stead." 



EXEMPLIFICATION. 



115 



The parable of the Prodigal Son is rightly 
called the Pearl of Parables, and our Master's 
greatest utterance may well be called the Dia- 
mond Sermon. No purer and more exalted 
teachings ever fell upon human ears than those 
contained in what is commonly known as the 
Sermon on the Mount, — though this name has 
been given it by compilers and translators of 
the Bible, and not by the Master himself, or by 
the Scripture authors. Indeed, this title really 
indicates more the Master's mood, than the 
material locality. 

Where did Jesus deliver this great lesson — 
or, rather, this series of great lessons — on 
humanity and divinity? On a hillside, near 
the sloping shores of the Lake of Galilee, where 
he spake primarily to his immediate disciples. 

In this simplicity, and with such fidelity, 
we see Jesus ministering to the spiritual needs 
of all who placed themselves under his care, 
always leading them into the divine order, 
under the sway of his own perfect understand- 
ing. His power over others was spiritual, not 



116 RETROSPECTION AND INTROSPECTION. 

corporeal. To the students, whom he had 
chosen, his immortal teaching was the bread of 
Life. When he was with them, a fishing-boat 
became a sanctuary, and the solitude was peo- 
pled with holy messages from the All-Father. 
The grove became his classroom, and nature's 
haunts were the Messiah's university. 

What has this hillside priest, this, seaside 
teacher, done for the human race ? Ask, rather, 
what he has not done? His holy humility, 
unworldliness, and self-abandonment wrought 
infinite results. The method of his religion 
was not too simple to be sublime, nor was his 
power so exalted as to be unavailable for the 
needs of suffering mortals, whose wounds he 
healed by Truth and Love. 

His order of ministration, was "first the 
blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in 
the ear." May we unloose the latchets of his 
Christliness, inherit his legacy of love, and 
reach the fruition of his promise : " If ye abide 
in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask 
what ye will, and it shall be done unto you." 



Way JVlarks* 

TN the first century of the Christian era Jesus 
went about doing good. The evangelists of 
those days wandered about. Christ, or the 
spiritual idea, appeared to human consciousness 
as the man Jesus. At the present epoch the 
human concept of Christ is based on the incor- 
poreal divine Principle of man, and Science has 
elevated this idea, and established its rules in 
consonance with their Principle. Hear this 
saying of our Master, "And I, if I be lifted up 
from the earth, will draw all men unto me." 

The ideal of God is no longer impersonated 
as a waif, or wanderer; and Truth is not frag- 
mentary, disconnected, unsystematic, but con- 
centrated and immovably fixed in Principle. 
The best spiritual type of Christly method 
for uplifting human thought and imparting 
divine Truth, is stationary power, stillness, 
and strength; and when this spiritual ideal 
is made our own, it becomes the model for 
human action. 

117 



118 RETROSPECTION AND INTROSPECTION. 

Saint Paul said to the Athenians, "For in 
Him we live, and move, and have our Being." 
This statement is in substance identical with 
my own : " There is no life, substance or intelli- 
gence in matter." It is quite clear that as yet 
this grandest verity has not been fully demon- 
strated, but it is nevertheless true. If Christian 
Science reiterates Saint Paul's teaching, we, 
as Christian Scientists, should give to the world 
convincing proof of the validity of this Scientific 
statement of Being. Having perceived, in ad- 
vance of others, this Scientific fact, we owe to 
ourselves and to the world a struggle for its 
demonstration. 

At some period and in some way the conclu- 
sion must be met that whatsoever seems true, 
and yet contradicts Divine Science and Saint 
Paul's text, must be, and is, false ; and that what- 
soever seems to be good, and yet errs, though 
acknowledging the true way, is really evil. 

As dross is separated from gold, so Christ's 
baptism of fire, his purification through suffer- 
ing, consumes whatsoever is of sin. Therefore 



WAY MARKS. 



119 



this purgation of divine mercy, destroying all 
error, leaves no flesh, no matter, to the mental 
consciousness. 

When all fleshly belief is annihilated, and 
every spot and blemish on the disk of conscious- 
ness is removed, then, and not till then, will 
immortal Truth be found true, and Scientific 
teaching, preaching, and practice be essentially 
one. " Happy is he that condemneth not himself 
in that thing which he alio we th, . . . for what- 
soever is not of faith is sin." Romans xiv. 
22, 23. 

There is no " lo ! here and lo there " in Divine 
Science, its manifestation must be "the same 
yesterday, and to day, and forever," since Sci- 
ence is eternally one, and unchanging, in Prin- 
ciple, rule, and demonstration. 

I am persuaded that only by the modesty and 
distinguishing affection illustrated in Jesus' 
career, can Christian Scientists aid the establish- 
ment of Christ's Kingdom on the earth. In the 
first century of the Christian era Jesus' teachings 
bore much fruit, and the Father was glorified 



120 RETROSPECTION AND INTROSPECTION. 

therein. In this period and the forthcoming 
centuries, watered by dews of Divine Science, 
this Tree of Life will blossom into greater free- 
dom and its leaves will be "for the healing of 
the nations." 

Ask God to give thee skill 

In comfort's art: 
That thou may'st consecrated be 

And set apart 
Unto a life of sympathy. 
For heavy is the weight of ill 

In every heart; 
And comforters are needed much 

Of Christ-like touch. 

— A. E. Hamilton. 



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